Increase Temperature and Save Energy

James Cerwinski
August 2, 2010

Who is ASHRAE and how can they help data center managers save energy?

The American Society of Heating, Refrigeration, and Air-Conditioning (“ASHRAE”), founded in 1894, is an international organization with 51,000 persons. ASHRAE fulfills its mission of advancing heating, ventilation, air conditioning, and refrigeration to serve humanity and promote a sustainable world through research, standards writing, publications, and continuing education. One such publication is the “Best Practices for Datacom Facility Energy Efficiency” in which they define the recommended temperature and humidity level as measured at the inlet of datacom equipment. A valuable point to note is that the 2009 recommended upper limit temperature is 80.6 degrees F which is an increase of 3.6 degrees F over the 2004 recommendation. It is also important to note that the specific recommended range is defined more precisely on a Psychrometric chart in which each point is defined by the dry-bulb temperature and the relative humidity.

It is widely accepted that you can save energy by avoiding over-cooling a data center. More on this in my next post.

James Cerwinski